


In Sickness

by pixiePique



Category: The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Familial Love, Fluff, Forced Prostitution, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Marriage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pregnancy, Romance, Romantic love, Roommates, Sort Of, descriptions are not graphic, kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 12:40:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18828853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixiePique/pseuds/pixiePique
Summary: “She crept up on me.”The life and death of Finnick Odair.





	In Sickness

A fishing accident.

His father’s trident is placed in his small, trembling hands.

Years later, somewhere far away, in a dark, filthy mine, a canary falls silent. A flame flickers.

Somewhere, Katniss Everdeen’s hands shake too.

…

“Finnick Odair!”

The first thing he registers is the briny scent of the nearby coast. Just as swimming became muscle memory, he finds another pattern, another trick he can do for the authorities like a trained dog. His feet move at the sound of his name, even if this time it is a dinner bell.

Mags remembers walking him to the square, holding his shaking hand even as he protested that, at the ripe old age of fourteen, he was too old for it. She is fifty years too late to volunteer, not even sure that a victor can.

She watches him walk to the stage, his confident air barely faltering before remaining firmly in place. That will get him sponsors. For a second, before she squishes the feeling down, she is glad.

He waits for the girl to be called- some blonde Mags doesn’t know. Finnick is unflinching, and Mags decides they must attend different schools. Again, she is glad. It’ll be easier to help him kill her. Still, she hopes it won’t come to that. He’ll never make a friend in the district again if he has to kill her personally.

They hug goodbye before he gets on the train, the last thing he says some joke about gaining more sponsors if the uniform they give him doesn’t have a shirt.

Mags watches her baby walk towards death and falls silent. She does not speak again.

...

Finnick has had a full body polish. His hair, just days ago matted with blood and missing large chunks, now frames his face in glossy gold. His bronze skin glows, wiped clean of the blood and bruises and burns and the pink scratches he leaves on himself at night before he finishes screaming.

No one comes to help him.

The only outward imperfection is his fingernails. They are bitten to the quick, cuticles bleeding, stinging when he chews them, ignoring the piles of Capitol delicacies around him.

His prep team despairs of him.

“Honestly, Finnick, you should be ashamed of yourself!”

He cannot find it in himself to disagree with them. He should be ashamed of himself. Just not for the reasons they suppose.

…

Finnick watches the boy he spent a week mentoring have his head ripped clean off his body by a smiling girl from 1. 

This one was only just twelve.

He doesn’t know whether it’s worse to feel it so acutely every time or that he’s slowly becoming numb to it.

It doesn’t seem like a thing a decent person should get used to.

He thinks about his old fishing net costume and his smile hardens. Good. He doesn’t have time to be decent.

...

Annie Cresta steps up onstage and Finnick almost throws up.

She is on the tail end of seventeen years old, just a few weeks from being safe from the reaping forever. Her knees are knocking together and she looks so scared he’s worried she’ll pass out before she even reaches the platform, and then what is he going to tell sponsors?

No one volunteers.

No one cries out in pain. No one takes an instinctive step forward. No one reaches out. No one even gasps.

Finnick knows right away to usher her straight onto the train.

She has nobody to say goodbye to.

…

 

He can’t believe it.

On second thought, he supposes he could believe it. A win for knowing how to swim. She didn’t even have to kill anyone. It’s almost enough to make him laugh, as she stutters her way through the interview up on that stage that has twenty-three ghosts still on it.

Later, when he finally lets himself love her, he’ll realize that her victory was not so accidental. He’ll remember how long she was with the careers- a victory by being lovable.

Their prep team has her smiling and waving at the cheering crowds until the last possible second, and when the doors hiss shut and the train pulls forward she seems to leave half a foot of poise and stature behind. The prep team leaves her to collapse on a bench, her hands tight over her ears.

Finnick is not very good at comfort.

He asks if she is okay. A stupid question. He doesn’t fault her for her silence.

There is rocking back and forth, like the boats at home. There are fingers twitching in her hair, braiding and unbraiding. He thinks of Mags and bites his lip so hard he draws blood.

They tie and untie some knots. The rope jerks and shivers violently. Finnick feels raindrops on his hands.

Holding her is like holding a thunderstorm- deadly, and violent, and uncertain. She is afraid of her own shadow.

Platitudes seem to help. It’s over. Lie. You’re safe now. Lie. Everything will be okay. Lie. 

I won’t let anything hurt you ever again.

He’s shocked to find he means it. He hasn’t meant something he said in a long time.

…

Finnick won a house next door to Mags’ in the Victor’s Village. It has sat, untouched, for five years. He and Mags stay put in his cozy childhood home where she’s lived since she was fifteen and try to pretend nothing’s changed.

For the first time, they have a neighbor.

He invites her to dinner, the word “housewarming” tossed around, gleaned from a history book. It sounds better than “congratulations.”

Nobody is there to move her in. He shifts some boxes, then leaves her alone in a house far too clean and pretty to trust. Like a glass of orange juice with an umbrella, six feet away from a heartbeat and a human life and a child cutting in and out like a distant radio signal.

He returns home and sits by the door. He does not take his shoes off. He waits.

When the screams start echoing from next door, he is on her porch in a flash, wrapping her in his arms as she cries.

He loses a neighbor and gains a roommate.

He learns her favorite color and the way she likes her eggs and he helps braid her hair every morning.

That is the last night she spends alone for a long time.

...

“What are you doing?”

Annie looks up from where she is carefully arranging her few possessions in a wooden box, her hands steadier than usual, and flushes bright red. It’s her own fault for leaving the door ajar, and now she has a face full of Finnick, his smile looking a little too forced to be real.

“I thought I’d move out today,” she starts quietly.

“Why?” He nudges the door open with his shoulder and moves closer to her, never close enough.

“I can’t stay here forever.” Her attempts at a joking tone have always been weak, and the tears that threaten to come through effectively ruin her plans. She sounds just as pathetic as usual, like a little lost puppy. She is sure the only thing Finnick has room to feel for her is pity.

When she blinks away the moisture she can’t blame on the humidity, she looks up to find Finnick looking like quite the lost puppy himself. She feels a sharp pain in her heart that she knows will only go away when he is smiling again, and she stops pretending there’s anything she wouldn’t do to make that happen.

“I wish you would.” 

There are a lot of reasons to stay. Logical reasons. She feels guilty for leaving him. The nightmares are easier to deal with here. Her house is cold and empty. He makes turtle eggs just the way she likes them. She cannot stand to see him in pain.

And these are all true, but in the end, she just really wants to stay with him. 

“Then I will.”

They are smiling, and they don’t stop for weeks, even in their sleep.

…

He and Mags mentor the kids. He doesn’t let Annie anywhere near them. Not because she’s dangerous, but because they are.

Anyone who might leave her is a threat.

He makes her stay in bed for the entirety of the games each year. He watches only because he cannot look away, his fingernails disappearing between his chattering teeth. Once their kids die, and they always do, he kisses Mags right between the eyes and they leave the room empty, waiting for the games to play themselves out and the TV to shut itself off.

He never stops calling them “our kids.” Indifference is what makes monsters, he decides.

...

“Excuse me, miss.”

Annie feels gentle fingers twist their way into her braid. She smiles before she even turns to see him. She smiles a lot these days.

“Yes?” She answers, sweet without trying. Finnick reigns in the fingers on his other hand, constantly wanting to reach out and brush against her arm, her cheek, her hair, to make sure that his greatest source of joy will not just crumble into dust.

“I’m afraid my hand has become trapped in your hair.” Finnick’s mouth is serious, but his eyes twinkle merrily and she stifles a giggle.

“Oh no,” Annie says, hiding a smirk in her book. “Is there no way to remove it safely?”

“I’m afraid I’ve tried everything.”

“I suppose we’ll have to cut it out,” she sighs. “Oh well, it’ll grow back eventually.”

“No!” Finnick’s eyes went wide and genuine for a moment, before recovering his teasing tone. “No, I think a much better option is just to wait it out.”

“Of course.” She makes room for him on the couch, and he plays with her hair while he tells her about all the inconveniences this will cause her.

“I know how annoying it will be to have a young man’s arm around your shoulder every moment, but I simply cannot see another alternative.”

“How long do you think it will stay in there?”

“No way to tell. Could be years.” He tries to look serious, but he can’t quite pull the corners of his mouth down. “Could be forever.”

“Oh, dear.”

Mags braids another fishhook and smiles, smiles as she watches her kids (they are all her kids, even the gone ones) fall in love. 

…

Finnick is forced into taking Capitol lovers at sixteen.

At nineteen, he takes on twice as many. Annie’s share. He will let them touch her over his cold, dead body. She stays in District 4, where he can be sure she’s safe.

They want him to call them pet names. Sweetheart. Baby. Darling. Princess.

He throws up every morning, even if he had nothing to drink. He learns to hate sex. He learns to hate the Capitol. He learns to hate himself.

Annie becomes “my love.” That’s how he addresses his poetry (well, the poetry written for him to read on screen), how he starts every prayer. The nickname belongs only to her. She is love. She is everything.

No matter how many times he brushes his teeth, he never feels clean until he can run home to her and bury his face in her hair that always smells like salt.

Maybe someday, they will make a child together. Someday when they can be sure their child will be safe, when they live somewhere better and they can get married. In a better future.

For now, he holds her tight and kisses her temple, and that is enough.

…

Haymitch wants to take down the Capitol. Wants his help. He can’t promise him a way out of the arena. He’ll be in danger, Mags will be in danger, Annie will be in danger.

He remembers kissing Annie goodbye at the Justice Building. Remembers her screams and sobs as he was forced to board the train. Remembers looking at Mags and knowing she wouldn’t be coming back. Remembers promising Annie he’d come home.

He almost kills Haymitch right then and there.

Then he thinks for a second. Thinks about how the Capitol took his parents away from him and left him to starve. How it tortured him and forced Mags to watch yet another of her loved ones suffer. How it forced them all to watch while it slaughtered their children. He thinks about how the Capitol took Annie’s childhood from her. How it will put her children in danger. How it would take him away from her and leave her alone and scared for her whole life.

The Capitol has already hurt her.

“I’m in.”

He stares at his new, shiny gold bracelet for a long time. Whatever happens in the arena, at least he’ll never have to look at the sickening shimmer of Capitol jewelry again.

…

When she’s not doing something smart and heroic, Katniss really gets on his nerves.

They’ve been underground for too long, and he’s sick of imagining what the Capitol is doing to Annie, the sound of her screams, over and over and over again. He’s tired of wondering whether she can scream at all anymore, whether they’ve cut out her tongue or if she’s run out of air. Whether she’s drowning in her own blood.

The only thing that makes the girl on fire’s strange visits bearable is that he knows she has to wonder the same things about Peeta.

“I wish she was dead.” He says quietly. “I wish they were all dead and we were, too.” 

He means it.

...

The officials of thirteen come to wake him, but Finnick has been out of bed and bouncing from room to room for hours. It is a day he never thought would come.

They have waited for this for years.

Annie sees him waiting at the end of the aisle for her, bouncing on his toes and face spread wide in a grin. 

She does not want to wait any more.

Maybe if someone else was walking her down the aisle, they would have held her back, told her to slow down and behave herself, maybe even made an outraged squeak and dug into her arm with their pink talons, if they were Effie. Maybe kept a frighteningly firm grip, like a steel trap, if they were Coin. Maybe given a too-familiar squeeze, if they were Plutarch.

But luckily, it’s Haymitch there, and he just chuckles and lets go of her arm, letting her go before she tears off the sleeve he was holding. She sprints down the aisle towards Finnick, who picks her up and twirls her around while the whole audience joins in their infectious laughter.

Once the ceremony starts, Finnick catches Haymitch’s eyes and silently thanks him. He gets it, as only victors do. The way time can run out so quickly. The importance of grabbing sweet things as quickly as possible while they still can.

…

Finnick gazes into the eyes of his bride the whole time, barely noticing different plates of food being set down and taken away again in front of him- a twentieth of what would have been served at a Capitol feast, and he thanks god that he’ll never have to go there again. Then, Katniss gasps and tenses up, rocking the table. He reacts immediately, head turning sharply and moving his body in front of Annie’s, a response to predators that aren’t here.

It’s just a cake, but Finnick knows what it means.

 

A hush falls over their little group as the wedding cake is wheeled over, past Katniss’ hands shaking like leaves, and it becomes clear who frosted it. A final gift from Peeta, sweetness and consideration itself, even through the foot of Snow he’s buried under.

Nobody really wants to eat it.

...

“Did you love Annie right away, Finnick?”

He didn’t. He couldn’t. She was so dangerous, just another kid he might have to watch die. Then when she won…

“There was a chance I could keep him.”

It finally clicks as he takes in Katniss’ question, her halting tone, the way her dead eyes stare at Peeta. She really does love him, loved him even back then, even when she didn’t know it. She still doesn’t know it now.

He shouldn’t have judged her so harshly before. Didn’t he do the same thing? Hold Annie at arm’s length for both their protection? He thinks Katniss is more like him than she realizes. No matter how many walls they build, the people they love end up worming their way into their hearts and sticking there forever.

“No,” he answers honestly. “She crept up on me.”

Katniss stares at Peeta long after her guard shift ends.

...

He takes what he knows will be his last breath and gazes up at the sky. He does not want to waste this moment on anger, on thoughts of Snow. Snow melts, anyway. Between Katniss and Peeta, fire and springtime, they’ll manage it.

The sky is green, like Annie’s dress on their wedding day, like the ocean that always beckoned, telling him his father was waiting for him.

One last grin, for the cameras.

Somewhere, Annie’s hand flies to her stomach without her quite knowing why, instinctively protecting the spot of brightness that is Finnick’s son. The only remaining part of a fire that burned too bright and was snuffed out too early.

Somewhere, Katniss’ hands shake as she pulls a bowstring taut.


End file.
